A Liberal’s Thank-You Letter to Donald Trump

Dear Mr. Trump,

As a native-born white American who happens to be a leftist Southerner, I’m writing to thank you so, so much for your key role in America’s quest for self-improvement. If it weren’t for you and your blustering buffoonery and all the people who have flocked to you, I really think it’d be another four or eight years before we’d have to face the god-awful truth about ourselves.

If ever, actually.

You’ve come along at a perfect time—things have gotten so heated lately!

First off, I think we can agree that America is a sucker for a rich white man in a suit, and boy do you have that one wrapped up. People really do listen to you, don’t they?

That billionaire celebrity thing is super-effective, so high-five on that one.

It’s also brilliant the way you had every single news outlet in the this country just falling all over you when you set out to be the POTUS. So, so impressive! I think you really scored—you couldn’t have made it this far without them.

So that, too, is a good reason to say Thanks—I just don’t think we knew our media was so money-grabby, but now we do!

Okay, so you know how we Americans try so hard to feel good about ourselves, right? Well now, thanks to you, we don’t have to hide our faults anymore.

I mean, we’re completely exposed now. It’s really freeing, you know?

We can finally stop pretending we’re working super hard on our racism problem, for one thing.

We were hiding behind our everything’s-fine facade like the addicts we are, saying things like, “Let’s just change things a little bit at a time,” but really, we haven’t been dealing with stuff that doesn’t much affect you and me white folks, if you know what I mean.

But damn, I think we can both see that people of color in this country are getting tired of waiting around for white folks to wrap their heads around equality.

Seriously, if it weren’t for you, we could go on pretending that Trayvon Martin and Freddie Gray and Sandra Bland and that little kid on the playground with the toy gun all had it coming, and that black people just exaggerate things.

Man, it’s like you poured Miracle-Gro all over our deepest, darkest secrets and made them come up like big, unstoppable, embarrassing beanstalks.

You seriously deserve a prize, but this letter of thanks is more meaningful than any trophy or engraved watch you could buy for yourself; this letter comes from the heart, Mr. Trump.

Seriously, man, the whole Republican party loathes you for letting the cat out of the bag on all this, but I think they should thank you!

I mean, look what’s happened—white people coming out of the woodwork, saying, “Yep, everything that’s wrong in this whole country is someone else’s fault, ’cause it sure as hell isn’t us white folks causing problems in America.”

Now, to be honest, we’re at a crossroads, which means we might not go with you over to the dark side.

We might not elect you—a man who shows all the signs of being an old-school Hitler-ish dictator—as our President. I’m just being honest with you, okay?

Now if we do elect you, let’s go ahead and admit you’d be the last President we ever elect. And I know how you are; you wouldn’t fall for the old We’re sorry, we didn’t mean it, we take it back crap. Tough love is your schtick!

We in the United States would go down in history as yet another nation to succumb to nationalistic, blame-someone-else-for-everything mob mentality. The world is full of stories like this—of short-sighted nations that have fallen for an up-and-coming dictator in the heat of their insecurities.

We could be like Europe with its centuries of this stuff!

We could vote you into office and then turn out to be like post-WWII Germany or Japan and get ourselves cut off at the knees due to our awful behavior to the rest of the world! After all, these things happen—that’s history for you!

So I gotta hand it to you, Mr. Trump, you really know how to play the fear card.

I just sincerely want to thank you for getting our national heart rate up. So many Americans are paying attention now!

It’s amazing! Young people, leftists like me, leftover hippies, and those crazy environmentalists are just so excited (not quite the right word, but you get my drift).

I have to say, it took a whack-job like you (no offense) to bring so many of our ugly warts (no offense to warts) into the light of day, and I really do thank you.

But I underestimated you at first, and I apologize.

I was sure there wasn’t enough political Viagra to keep you interested in politics, but now I’ll be the first to admit, you’ve done a helluva job out there exposing us and our absurdly over-fattened capitalistic, blame-y, violent, racist, and entitled (don’t you just love that word?) society. Talk about tough love—we really needed to know this stuff.

I do have one question before I go, if you wouldn’t mind getting back to me on this: Have you been contributing to Hillary Clinton‘s campaign? The reason I ask, is because it seems like something you’d do—you’re clever with money like that.

And with your new-and-improved “reasonable” persona, I’m kind of thinking you’re planning to whoop up on her, come November… and something tells me you don’t plan to be a gentleman!

It’s just that you seem to either know Bernie Sanders isn’t going to be running against you, or like everyone else, you don’t know what the hell that man will do next. He’s a wild card, that one.

Anyway, I know you’re a busy man, so I’ll let you go.

Just keep in mind, we might not choose you in November. I know you’ve got your heart set on being all-powerful, but you’ll still have your billions and your supermodel wife and all those buildings with your name on them.

Just know that you’ve served your country like nothing we’ve ever seen, and no one can take that away from you, Donald.

But just to sum up, thank you for exposing the stuff we Americans were trying to ignore, and thank you for getting people riled up and hella involved like never before. Honestly, we wouldn’t be where we are today without you.

Oh, and I do want to hand it to you for not cheating to make it this far. You’ve done this purely by showing your ass and doing your own thing, and wow-o-wow, do we love to gawk at jackasses and show-offs.

You made some good points in this one. The thing that worries me about the election- we have the electoral college and apparently the chosen electors don’t have to vote the way we want- they can up and vote any way they choose. What’s democratic (as if we really swallowed that lie) about that? Sure wish we’d go back to popular vote. Maybe you could address that sometime- along with our elected officials not truly being our representatives.

On the one hand, the delegates are supposed to vote according to the will of those who elected them, and on the other hand, they’re supposed to vote their conscience, and these two may not always be the same. In a case like this one, where we can clearly see a horrific future should Trump get elected, well, maybe the people say they want Trump, but their representative sees it differently? Their maturity and wisdom might be important.

But the current reality is that they vote according to neither one of these factors; they vote in their own political interest, which is why we’re seeing that crazy Bernie, incredibly popular though he is in spite of a considerable lack of media coverage and official encouragement, falling victim to the system while Hillary “clinches” the party’s nomination and the media pretends she’s winning the popular vote.

Anyhoo, what we have here is a lesson in civics. As citizens, we still have the freedom to make ourselves heard. And until the situation changes, I believe we have a responsibility to do just that.